I think of David’s rod deep under Silwan— visions of Batsheva mouth to the earth: “Now turn on your right side without thinking of your right side.” My transplanted spine,…

I. “The colline were covered in daffodils,” my Nonna tells me. II. Green grows yellow with swollen seeds. How suddenly they open releasing their egg yolk trumpets. III. I am…

Did I walk from his party, thirsty and dry? If I had quit drinking where was the Saqi? In one shaft, she has the two impaled. First my head, now…

Slate blue clouds, bare trees Standing sentinel: in the air A mild chill. What better day, Dear God, to be alive, to be still.

look what you have built: the artificial lagoon (landlocked by dunes, too shallow, but you are the only one bothered by that) imported white-sand beach (upon which sunbathers gather their…

What I despise are the wrong questions, the requests of the strivers: How much did they pay you? Oh the indignity. How did you meet so-and-so? The stupidity. Please, ask…

Of course there are nights when I crave a woman— Of course the hardness of the road gets to me, Of course I feel the Roman stones beneath my sandals,…

The truth is, you never wanted to be normal; so the wily shoemaker says to me, when I find him transformed, a leather merchant in Verona, cavorting with the sellers…

I couldn’t take it anymore. Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Howard, Thomas More. It was like all those frickin’ Josés in 100 Years of Solitude. So I put the Toms…

I am holding two frog hearts in my palms; they are greenish, warm, labial. I am following the tell of the dream that eluded me upon waking yesterday morning, which…

The threading finally shot on the window crank, I disassemble the unit and out falls a tiny egg, like a porcelain ball bearing. It may have been there for years.…

In a small Bolivian town on a narrow cobblestone path, a woman in a black bowler hat and white embroidered blouse sits at a tiny tin table in front of…